People Right Careershttp://www.peoplerightcareers.com
Wed, 18 Mar 2015 19:18:12 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.2Get Over Being A Sugar Cookiehttp://www.peoplerightcareers.com/2014/05/27/get-over-being-a-sugar-cookie/
http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/2014/05/27/get-over-being-a-sugar-cookie/#commentsTue, 27 May 2014 21:32:27 +0000http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/?p=1290Admiral William H. McRaven, Commander U. S. Special Operations Command and Navy Seal spoke last week at the U of Texas Commencement Address. The motto of the Austin campus is, “What starts here changes the world”, and Admiral McRaven used this motto as the theme of his speech.

In Seal training, one of the things recruits have to endure is uniform inspection, and it is designed so that they will fail. No matter how hard they prepare to have every aspect of their uniform in perfect condition, the instructors will find some aspect that does not measure up. When that happens, the recruit has to run, fully clothed, down into the ocean surf, then roll around in the sand until they are completely covered. They have to wear that uniform for the rest of the day. It is called, getting ‘sugar cookied’.

Some recruits can’t get over this humiliation and the fact that they have failed when they thought they did everything right, and they drop out of the program. In short, they don’t learn to handle failure.

In school, in our career, and in life we will all likely fail many times. But it is how we handle the failure that separates the top performers from the rest.

If you are going to change the world…Get over being a sugar cookie!

]]>http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/2014/05/27/get-over-being-a-sugar-cookie/feed/0Don’t Be Afraid of the Circushttp://www.peoplerightcareers.com/2014/05/25/dont-be-afraid-of-the-circuses/
http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/2014/05/25/dont-be-afraid-of-the-circuses/#commentsSun, 25 May 2014 15:55:23 +0000http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/?p=1282In this season of graduation ceremonies and speeches, I decided to share some of the encouragement I heard given to students as they move on to their next phase of life. At the University of Texas combined graduation ceremony on May 17, Admiral William H McRaven, Commander U. S. Special Operations Command and Navy Seal, gave the commencement address. His theme was what he had learned in Seal training that students should take into their career after college.

The U of Texas has the motto: What starts here changes the world. My niece, who was graduating last weekend, actually had “What starts here” on top of her cap so we could find her among the thousands of graduates. Admiral McRaven framed the points of his speech with the phrase, “If you want to change the world…” and one of the examples was, “don’t be afraid of the circus”.

He explained that in Seal training, the soldiers are driven through extreme mental and physical conditioning tests each day, and they are designed such that some of them will fail. Those who fail to pass all of the exams of the day are then invited to the circus, which is an additional two hours of intense physical conditioning that same evening.

If you get invited to the circus, the odds increase that you will fail more of the daily exams the following day(s), because your body will not have had enough time to rest and recover, and you will get invited to even more circuses. But what they have learned is that soldiers who got invited to multiple circuses built up additional stamina, and by the end of Seal training they were often the most fit graduates of the program.

So when your job is tough, and you think nothing is going well, or you are having to work harder than your peers, think what it may be preparing you for. “If you want to change the world, don’t be afraid of the circus.”

]]>http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/2014/05/25/dont-be-afraid-of-the-circuses/feed/0How Much Was a Talent Worth?http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/2014/05/22/how-much-was-a-talent-worth/
http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/2014/05/22/how-much-was-a-talent-worth/#commentsThu, 22 May 2014 11:44:02 +0000http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/?p=1280Almost everyone has heard of the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-18). I heard the story so many times growing up that I didn’t pay much attention to the details. You probably know the story: A man was about to go on a journey, and before he left he gave his possessions to his slaves. He gave one slave five talents, one slave two talents, and the third slave one talent. And in Matt 25:15, it says he chose these amounts based on their “ability”.

So, did you ever stop to think how much a talent was worth back then? I always assumed it was a small or insignificant amount. In today’s economy, I guessed probably less than $100. And if you thought the same thing – you would be missing one of the key points also!

I looked in biblegateway.com and found that a talent was equal to ‘about 20 years of a day laborer’s wage‘. In today’s economy, if you assume that a day laborer (i.e., manual labor worker) makes about $20,ooo/year, then one talent was worth $400,000. Five talents back then would be the equivalent of $2,000,000 today. And these amounts were allocated based on their abilities – not on their interests, or on their personality styles, but on their skill sets!

It makes a big difference when we are helping our youth choose a career to help them using the best data available. If the guy in this parable had a total of $3,200,000, and allocated it according to their abilities, don’t you thing we should look at a student’s skills before sending them off to college and investing over $100,000 for them to get a college degree?

One of my biggest pet peeves is how much emphasis young adults (and many consultants) put on interests when making career choices. It is also amazing how many assessment instruments there are for interests – and how many people think they are just as important as talents or skills.

The usual way interests are used is to tell someone to follow their passions (interests), and everything will turn out just fine. We assume that if a person has an interest in something, then they must also be talented in that area. How many high school athletes do you know (especially males) who are passionate about playing their high school sport as a professional? How many of them actually have the body type, and physical skills, and the determination to play a professional sport? The percentages of high school athletes who go on to play professional sports are so low they are staggering!

If you want to emphasize interests – do it in the negative way. That means, if you don’t like something – by all means don’t do it. There is a great example of this negative interest philosophy in the Bible. In Judges 7 Gideon was about to go to war against the Midianites with 32,000 men in his army, which God said were too many. The first way he reduced the number was to say, “Whoever is afraid and trembling, let him return” (to his family). In other words, if you don’t like this kind of work (i.e., going to war), then go home.

Of all the things you should take into account when choosing a career, interests is the category that is most likely to change. It is O.K. for interests to be part of the career choice equation, just be careful how you use them and how much weight you put on them.

]]>http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/2014/05/19/interests-are-over-rated/feed/0Myth Busting: They Will Figure It Out In Collegehttp://www.peoplerightcareers.com/2014/05/09/myth-busting-they-will-figure-it-out-in-college/
http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/2014/05/09/myth-busting-they-will-figure-it-out-in-college/#commentsFri, 09 May 2014 21:05:12 +0000http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/?p=1274Most parents think it is O.K. to send their kids off to college to figure things out – things like what they will do with the rest of their lives – because that is where most of us started to figure things out.

The problem is we live in a different world now!

When we (parents) went to college, very few of the colleges were ‘full’, so if you could fill out the application, you could probably get in

All four years of college ‘only’ cost $12-$15,000

Most of us could find jobs when we graduated, and those jobs paid at least as much as we paid to attend all four years of college

Almost no one had student debt upon leaving college, because we didn’t even think of getting a credit card until after we graduated.

Fast forward to 2014:

College applications are extremely competitive, and students can’t go anywhere they want

Four years of college cost $100-$200,000, and only 31% of students are actually getting out in four years!

Only 30% of college students have a job offer in-hand at graduation

Average starting salaries (approx. $40,000) are only a fraction of what they paid to get their degree

Average student debt at graduation is over $25,000

Now that you understand the situation, let’s talk about the resources available. The US Department of Education recommends that the student to counselor ratio in high school be no more than 250:1. The average U.S. public high school ratio is 472:1. And if you think that is reason for concern, just wait, because it gets worse. The average student:counselor ratio in colleges with less than 20,000 students enrolled is 1,889:1, and for colleges with over 20,000 students the ratio is 5,876:1!

So thinking that your child will figure out what they want to do in life during college – and that will all work out well – is one of the biggest risks you could ever take. It is kind of like going to Vegas and betting all of your money on one single spin of the roulette wheel. I guess it is possible you could win (and win big), it just isn’t very likely!

]]>http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/2014/05/09/myth-busting-they-will-figure-it-out-in-college/feed/0When Should Students Start Thinking About Careers?http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/2014/03/21/when-should-students-start-thinking-about-careers/
http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/2014/03/21/when-should-students-start-thinking-about-careers/#commentsFri, 21 Mar 2014 14:09:47 +0000http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/?p=1268On March 17, 2014 the Wall Street Journal published an article with the headline, “Using Salary Prospects to Choose a College Major“. In it, they covered two topics that we talk about often with our clients: What information should they use when choosing a career (and therefore a major), and When should they start doing this. The writer interviewed several consultants to ask them how much students should use the potential future salary earnings projections when choosing their career path.

One comment from Ms. Schneider in the article caught my attention when she said, “…any useful college advice to students has to start with their own interests, inclinations and sense of possible career paths. But the reality is that, at too many post-secondary institutions, students are allowed to leave all planning for the future until they get around to it on their own—which is usually much too late.”

I found it interesting because she points out the problems of waiting until the student gets around to this planning phase, and because she led with the typical default approach of focusing first on their interests. And she did NOT mention (and neither did any of the other consultants quoted in the article) that most colleges suggest or recommend that students use assessments instruments that are not reliable, and many of those instruments were not created or intended for use in job or career matching.

Bottom line, if leave it up to the colleges, or let your kids do what everybody else is doing, they will likely experience the same (poor) results most college students are experiencing these days – many of which we cover in our Ultimate Student Success Process video.

]]>http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/2014/03/21/when-should-students-start-thinking-about-careers/feed/0My Wife Believes Thishttp://www.peoplerightcareers.com/2014/03/15/my-wife-believes-this/
http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/2014/03/15/my-wife-believes-this/#commentsSat, 15 Mar 2014 15:53:46 +0000http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/?p=1255My wife and I use to argue (I mean, get into discussions) all the time when our kids lived at home about whether we should let our teenagers sleep later, or get them up to get stuff done on weekends. I was coming from the old school perspective, coming from my personal experience of my dad getting my brother and I up early on Saturdays to work around the house or go with him to workouts (he was a high school coach). My wife was saying that studies showed that teenagers need more sleep.

In the Mar 14, 2014 Dallas Morning News is an article backing up her viewpoint, “Study: Later start to day helps teens”. It seems that studies on the adolescent body clock suggest that high schools with later start times are performing better in many areas, including mental health, car crash rates, attendance, and in some cases scores on standardized tests.

I still argue they could get more sleep if they would go to bed earlier – they don’t have to get it in the morning. And I’m not sure how this will impact them when it comes to getting a job, especially if they go to college and plan to join the corporate world.

But the good news – at least for me – is that my kids are now 25 and 21. And I don’t have to worry about what time they get up anymore, because they are living on their own and have figured it out.

]]>http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/2014/03/15/my-wife-believes-this/feed/0Colleges Feeling the Heat – or They Will Soonhttp://www.peoplerightcareers.com/2014/02/22/colleges-feeling-the-heat-or-they-will-soon/
http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/2014/02/22/colleges-feeling-the-heat-or-they-will-soon/#commentsSat, 22 Feb 2014 18:26:50 +0000http://www.peoplerightcareers.com/?p=1230This week I was speaking to a group of parents who will soon be sending there children off to college. I had made the comment during my presentation that colleges don’t really measure their results, at least not of how well their students do after graduation. Almost all of the college rankings are based on statistics about the INCOMING students they are able to attract, and very little data is available on how many of them are actually gainfully employed as a result of their college degrees.

One of the attendees (thanks Reagan) sent me this WSJ article the next day. It looks like the tide may be starting to turn, at least for some smaller colleges that want to become known for the product they produce. Richard Freeland, Massachusetts Commissioner of Higher Education, said, “this (is a) huge paradox sitting at the center of higher education,” and “At most schools, we don’t really know what learning is going on.”

Some of the interesting points made in the article include:

Although the Obama Administration has called for more accountability of colleges, including measures of graduation rates and loan defaults by students (indicating the degree didn’t lead to much), any measure of what they actually learned would be voluntary (i.e., it won’t happen through government efforts)

Mr. Freeland is setting up a project of about 50 public schools across nine states where faculty from other schools will actually grade how much a student learns

Private, select schools are the ones with the most to lose as we collect more data, because once we collect this data, we may see that other schools are producing more qualified products at a cheaper rate

Bottom line, if you are a parent who will be sending a child to college in the coming years, you should want to know how well colleges are performing before you make the huge investment required to send a kid to school today.

To see how we help students make wise decisions about college and career, see our new video.

This might be funny – If it weren’t TRUE!

Parents and students who have heard me speak have heard me talk have heard about the four reasons why so many college students (69%) don’t graduate in four years. Number two on that list is that many of our high schools are turning out students who are NOT prepared to handle college-level courses.

I live in Dallas, and last week The Dallas Morning News published an article (Headline: 24% yet to pass STAAR) which gave the following statistics about public education in Texas:

76% of the 309,000 students that make up the high school graduating class of 2015 have passed four of the five STAAR end-of-course exams that are required for them to graduate next year. (The fifth exam is taken by most juniors this spring semester)

This was AFTER failing grades in either English I or English II were ‘forgiven’ if their combined score in these two exams was high enough. Without this special dispensation, an additional 25% would not be on track to graduate – making the total nearly 50%!

This was also after the state legislature reduced the number of exams required to graduate down from 15 to just 5

Students only had to correctly answer ONLY 37% of the questions on the Algebra I and Biology exams, and slightly more than 60% of the questions on the English I and II exams. That is what they consider to be passing grades!

So, it looks like, if they can’t pass 15 exams – let’s just give them 10, and if they can’t pass at 70%, let’s make it 60% or 37% is the answer to the question, “Are our high school students prepared for college-level courses after high school?”

What wasn’t clear was if the legislature was also going to suggest that colleges lower their expectations for what students need to score on their course exams to pass at the next level…

Like I said, this might by funny – if it weren’t TRUE!

As parents, how much are you watching how the high schools you send your kids to are doing? If not, WHY NOT?

I still remember hearing Jim Rohn speak 20 years ago and his main message was, Where you end up 5 or 10 years from now will depend primarily on the books you read and the people you hang out with. Today I read an article by David Brooks on how the words are changing in the books we read, and what that means for our culture.

Reading seems to be almost a lost art these days. It is being replaced by not only reality TV or endless television sitcoms, but also by video on demand for almost any topic or a plethora of video games (many of which seem to focus on shooting, killing, and death). When you are traveling this summer try counting how many cars you pass that have children who are reading versus children who are playing or watching video streamed to their iPads.

When I go online to see recent news videos, I am amazed at the topics (Benghazi, IRS scandal, targeted citizen groups, news agencies being taped or targeted), and even more amazed that so many people are either unaware or unconcerned about where these types of events might be leading our country. And most of these same (uninformed) people could probably tell you who are still in the competition for The Voice, or Dancing With the Stars, or Survivor series whatever.

Brooks’ article and recent news points us to the facts that NOT studying or reading some material about our history leads to further cultural decline in our country. What might change if we asked our youth (and adults too, for that matter) to start spending more time in good books (ones that talk about faith and culture and our history) – and less time in front of the TV or video displays. What if you made reading a family activity over the summer? Or all agreed to read the same book (on your own personal digital devices) and then scheduled time to discuss the material, maybe even with other families?

I won’t add my list of suggested reading, you can get those lists online in many places, but I will suggest one book that I am reading right now, The 5000 Year Leap, by W. Cleon Skousen. It is a very interesting read about how our government was founded and how it is intended to work.